The murder of satire is no laughing matter. The horrifying carnage at Charlie Hebdo is a reminder, if ever we needed it, that irreverence is the lifeblood of freedom. I suppose it is some sort of backhanded compliment that the monsters behind the slaughter are so fearful of the lance of mirth that the only voice they have to muffle it is the sound of bullets. Magazines such as Charlie Hebdo are in the business of taking liberties, even outrageous ones, but they exist so that we never take the gift of disrespect for granted.
Liberty and laughter have been twinned in the European tradition for more than three centuries and have together proclaimed as precious the right to ridicule. Graphic satire first arose as a weapon in the atrocious and prolonged religious wars that divided Catholics and Protestants. For Protestants the printing press was the answer to the imagery of the Roman church by which, as they saw it, heretics and sceptics were brought to book. So they invented an anti-iconography in which popes were turned into fantastic monsters, and kings into ministers of slaughter. The Dutch, who invented the illustrated news gazette in the middle of the 17th century, saw themselves as the victims of religious fury. Their graphic counter-attack began with popular illustrated histories of their rebellion against the Spanish monarchy — with the Duke of Alva their favourite bogeyman. It broadened into a regular weapon of partisan polemics inside the Republic as well as against foreign threats to “Holland’s Freedom”.
The first great modern graphic satirist was Romeyn de Hooghe, enlisted by William III at the end of the 17th century in his relentless war to the death with Louis XIV. De Hooghe obliged with sprawling cartoons representing the wars against the French monarch and his allies as a battle between liberty and religious despotism. The satirists again saw themselves leading the cavalry charge against the bigots. And it was in the interests of the Protestant states to let them off the leash.